sticky

From stick +‎ -y.

• IPA^(key): /ˈstɪki/

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• Rhymes: -ɪki

sticky (comparative stickier, superlative stickiest)

1. Tending to stick; able to adhere via the drying of a viscous substance.

   Is this tape sticky enough to stay on that surface?

   • 2016 June 5, Thomas Manch, “CuriousCity: What happens to my library books when I return them?”, in Stuff‎, archived from the original on 2019-05-04:

     Particularly sticky books are cleaned with methylated spirits.

2. Difficult, awkward.

   This is a sticky situation. We could be in this for weeks if we're not careful.

   • 2020 June 25, Tegan Bennett Daylight, “My mother taught me the joy of reading. I remember her through books”, in Katharine Viner, editor, The Guardian‎, London: Guardian News & Media, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2023-05-27:

     Among the books Mum brought me to read when I was a child were The Secret Garden and A Little Princess, as well as their author Frances Hodgson Burnett's smash hit, Little Lord Fauntleroy. I haven't met an adult my age who has read this book but I did so several times. It's a sticky book, guided by that strange Victorian obsession with "the little mother" – the same obsession that Virginia Woolf, a child of Victorian parents, grappled with in her diaries and her fiction. Somehow, though, I learned to overlook the archaic, to be open to the oddnesses of different eras, and to read for something else.

3. Of a death: unpleasant, grisly.
   • 2014 September 8, Michael White, “Roll up, roll up! The Amazing Salmond will show a Scotland you won’t believe”, in Alan Rusbridger, editor, The Guardian‎, London: Guardian News & Media, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2022-10-13:

     Salmond studied medieval Scottish history as well as economics at university so he cannot say he has not had fair warning – it was even more turbulent and bloody than England at that time – and plenty of Scotland's kings and leaders came to a sticky end. If it happens this time, it won't be dull.

4. Of weather: hot and windless and with high humidity, so that people feel sticky from sweating.
   • 2008, Robert K. Fitts, Wally Yonamine: The Man Who Changed Japanese Baseball:

     The baby was due in December and the hot, sticky August weather was making Jane uncomfortable.

5. (finance) Tending to stay the same; resistant to change.

   a sticky price; sticky wages

6. (computing, informal, of a setting) Persistent.

   We should make the printing direction sticky so the user doesn't have to keep setting it.

7. (computing, of a window) Appearing on all virtual desktops.
8. (Internet, of threads on a bulletin board) Fixed at the top of the list of topics or threads so as to keep it in view.
9. (Internet, of a website) Compelling enough to keep visitors from leaving.

   A woman has come to me with the complaint that her website is not sticky: 70% of the visits last 30 seconds or less.

10. (informal) Resembling or characteristic of a stick.

    What's something that is brown and sticky? A stick

• (able or likely to adhere): claggy, tenacious; see also Thesaurus:adhesive
• (hot, windless and humid): close, muggy, sultry; see also Thesaurus:muggy

• tacky

sticky (countable and uncountable, plural stickies)

1. A sticky note, such as a post-it note.

   Her desk is covered with yellow stickies.

2. (Internet) A discussion thread fixed at the top of the list of topics or threads so as to keep it in view.
3. (manufacturing) A small adhesive particle found in wastepaper.
4. (Australia, colloquial) A sweet dessert wine.
5. (slang) Sticky-icky; marijuana, especially the sticky, resin-covered buds.
   • 2006, Noire [pseudonym], Thug-A-Licious: An Urban Erotic Tale, New York, N.Y.: One World, Ballantine Books, →ISBN, page 268:

     We'd smoked some nice sticky that night and fucked with some Erk and Jerk too, so my head was still cloudy when Pimp came in the room and said get up.

   • 2011 April 12, “Made Men”‎performed by Rick Ross:

     Still smoking sticky, it ain't no other option / Not for made niggas, and I'm never stopping

   • 2014, Jagada Chambers, Based on a True Story:

     As drunk as I was, all I could think about was getting some sticky down my lungs.

6. (obsolete, slang, uncountable) Wax.

sticky (third-person singular simple present stickies, present participle stickying, simple past and past participle stickied)

1. (Internet, bulletin boards, transitive) to fix a thread at the top of the list of topics or threads so as to keep it in view.

• “sticky”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.